Whodunit?
by seghen
Summary: Chloe Sullivan is dead and everyone is a suspect...including her dearest friends and closest acquaintances. But who did it?
1. Victim

**OT COMIC BOOK COMPATIBLE! This is just for the television show, nothing more or less. Pete is not married to Lana, etc.**

He did not understand his own calm. It was inexcusable, but yet it existed, a ghost in the back of his mind, a mockery to himself and all who had ever encountered such a situation.

The shock was still seeping in, slowly but with a steady pulse. "She's dead."

"She's dead. She's dead. She's dead..." the thought continued to repeat in his mind like some sort of looped recording. There she lay, her body slumped, her blond hair plastered to the side of her smooth cheek. Her neck was a discolored and he immediately identified this as a bruise that can only come from human hands.

Her bottom lip was chapped, blood crusted over. It seemed apparent that she had been biting down on the piece of flesh as she was strangled to death, many other signs of her struggle were apparent: There were fingernail marks clawing into dirt, clumps of grass enfolded in her limp hand. Her "Mary Janes" were scuffed, the earth surrounding them suffered accordingly.

He still could not believe it. It was all

simply too outlandish to believe, she could not be dead. Not

her, not Chloe. She was too strong, too full of life...but the pulse, or rather the lack thereof, does not lie.

One of her shoe buckles were broken and tarnished, her camisole torn at the spaghetti strap sleeves, her blue jeans covered in clumps of dirt and coated with grass stains. Her nose was misshapen, like the killer had hit her in a feeble attempt to quiet her, though it had evidently not worked.

Chloe Sullivan, maiden name, had been twenty-eight when some fiend had taken her life, robbed her light and talent from the world, and thirty-three year old Archibald Stewart, P.D., had every intention of discovering why.

The coroner snapped pictures, identifying her mere moments after a tourist who was just passing through uncovered her body. Her ID was in her pocket along with her wallet, everything still intact apart from the owner. It had been nearly dawn when the driver had seen the limp legs laying from outside the underbrush. By that time she had been dead for only three or so hours, the body picked clean of any

clues, hairs, prints, blood.

Archie was a rookie, only on the force for two years, and this was not the worst that he had seen. It was a crime of passion yet, near the end, whoever had committed this foul act seemed to have sobered up drastically. The officers were milling about the site, taking tire imprints and such. Clark Kent arrived on the scene moments before the victim was sealed inside the opaque bag that read, "Smallville Coroner," in white letters on the side. The look on his face was enough to rule the man out as a potential

suspect.

"Chloe," the word had not even left his mouth, but his lips formed the name with such sorrowful grace that Archie felt compelled to...comfort him with something, anything.

"Were you related?" He asked, desperately trying to find something to do with his idle hands. Archie resolved to picking his nails down and beyond the quick, removing flecks of dirt from the skin he'd revealed.

Clark blinked

stupidly, gaping like a fish and on the verge of tears.

When he answered his words were too brisk, too hard, like a man revealing emotion. "Yeah, not by blood but...yeah."

The rather obvious question suddenly struck him like an edge of shrapnel clipping him on the side of the head. "How did you know about the victim?" Kent was slower to answer this question, staring blankly at the body bag.

"The news, a few minutes ago, they mentioned something and I couldn't reach her so..." He trailed off, not noticing as the officer glanced around him in curiosity.

"Where's your car?" He asked and Clark was hasty to step forward and toward the body of his friend, abandoning Artie. Mr. Stewart turned away, knowing the task than lay ahead.

Informing the victim's husband.

**how do u like it?**


	2. Clark

**I have had this chapter complete for over three months so I apologize for the lateness, but I was incapable of getting it edited.**

**Seven years prior:**

"What do you think you're doing?" Clark Kent said, his voice fluctuating steadily as he chased, yes, 'chased' after Chloe Sullivan. "Come back! Don't just drop this on me and waltz away!"

She looked back at him, an expression of complete confusion plastered on her face. "I do not waltz, you should know. I've stepped on your toes before. Really, you should know better." He could not tell whether or not she was serious or not. "This is my decision, and I have decisioned...er, decided." She quickly revised, shocked at her own lack of grammatical skills.

"It is," He agreed slowly. "But, are you sure? You can't just decide this so suddenly. One day your engaged, the next you decided that it doesn't work for you anymore?"

"Clark, I know what I'm doing." She snapped, flipping her shoulder-length champagne hair over her shoulder. He was quick to follow, shoulders stiff, lips tight.

"You never know what you're doing, Chlo." Responding to the skeptical glare she spared him he quickly revised. "Fine, you rarely know what you're doing." She nodded, accepting the gesture.

"That's all I ask Clark. I just need a little...faith."

He quirked a raven eyebrow. "All you ask? You are perhaps the most high-maintenance 'noble' girl that I've ever met." Her lips twitched as though she were about to speak, but instead she turned away from her friend with a sort of self-satisfied smile plastered on her face.

Being Clark, suddenly developing the Chloe-curiosity, he admitted defeat. "What is it that's so funny?" He asked, exasperated by her. Once the words left his mouth she whirled around and put her hands into the air, stretching the turquoise material of her cardigan.

"Say it, Clark." She said, baring her teeth and taking him by the flannel collar. He frowned, considering whether or not Chloe had a personality disorder.

"What, Chlo? Did you run out of Ritalin, I could go and get you some in about...what, eleven seconds?" This did nothing to pacify her.

"You're always doing that, Clarky-kins. I can't help but smile like a dummy when you stay silly stuff like that." She teased, tweaking his cheek affectionately before returning to her normal posture and increasing her pace slightly. She was begging to be followed.

He caught up with her, unable to avoid getting caught in the little intricate trap she construed in her mind moments before. "Say what, keep up like this and I'm shipping you off to Belle Reve with the rest of the wackos in town." She laughed at him unabashedly.

"Yeah, then I'll just conspire with the rest of the crazies on bringing you down. Half of the inmates have been personally toted there by the men in white coats courtesy of you, farm boy." She joked, nudging his shoulder painfully and without need as they approached the aloof red-haired goddess.

Leanne LaRock smiled winningly to her companion, someone that Chloe vaguely recalled. "Go super speed Clark, c'mon, you don't need this. She can't see you yet." They halted and he stumbled to the ground, hiding behind the nearest bush, yanking the petite blond along with him. "...or you could hide."

He shot her an exasperated glance, "I'm not hiding. Now shush, they're coming." Though it certainly looked that way. They passed by, blissfully unaware of their presence. Chloe came to her feet, brushing the dirt and twigs from the pleats of her pants.

"These were new."

He rolled his eyes. "I've seen you in those since before Christmas." She was caught.

"I was depending on the cliched generalization that men don't pick up on clothes to help me out in this situation. Try to score a free pair of pants." They continued on their merry way, hoping to avoid any other encounters.

"Clark, have you even talked to Leanne since the two of you called things off?" He grew increasingly uncomfortable, resulting in a quick change in conversation.

"What did you want me to say 'Chloe-kins'?" She giggled like a tipsy school girl.

"You are the master of sub-change, Clark." She said, avoiding his eyes slightly. He laughed at the hypocrisy in that statement.

"I am? You are the...jedi master." The Star Wars inference was not worth a patented eye-roll.

"Clark, you should drop the pop culture references. It doesn't suit your...country charms."

"And what is that supposed to mean...? Wait, your changing the subject...again!" She bowed gracefully, flipping her hair.

"I am Obi-Wan-Chloe. Bow down before my lifesaver." He furrowed his brow and tapped her shoulder.

"It's light saber." She snorted.

"You are such a dork."

"You really should harness your distracting ability for good." He joked.

"It's good to be bad, sometimes." Clark seized her by the shoulders and shook her bodily for good measure.

"What were you talking about!" He asked, exhausted. "I'm not going to let it drop, hate to disappoint you." He knew defeat when he saw it, and Chloe was showing all signs of this.

She was not going to give up without one last fight for silence. "I know you can snap me like a toothpick Clark, and honestly that does a bit to make me feel feminine." She batted her eyelashes.

"Chloe," He said in a would-be-dangerous tone if he were not smiling.

"FIne." She shrugged, throwing up her arms in defeat. "I surrender, I pull a Dido with my white-flag, wave it high and proud." Her cheeks were hot enough to fry an egg on, burning under his scrutinizing glare. "I was just thinking, er, saying that everything you say-to me, is...a compliment that's twisted to sound like an insult. And you should just tell me...why." It was evident that this was not her original wording, but he cared not.

He released Chloe, looking at her strangely, as though she had something large and green wedged between her teeth. "Is this...'this' why you and Jim aren't working out?"

She frowned slightly, itching behind her ear hastily. "Is 'this' why you and Leanne didn't work out?" Chloe questioned, turning the tables on him so quickly that not even his super-balance could withstand it.

"Well, no." He said in an utterly unconvincing tone that caused her to roll her eyes and raise her brow simultaneously. The girls undoubtedly had talent. "I couldn't...talk to her about, well, you know." She smirked and nodded.

"Yeah, 'I know.' You couldn't tell her that you were humanly-challenged, that might have put a damper on the honeymoon-period." She said, searching his face for some sort of acknowledgment. He spared her a shrug before changing the topic. The two of them seemed to be vying for the professional title.

"Are you doing anything later?" He asked, looking squarely at his feet.

"I'm returning the engagement gifts and avoiding Jim's crazy mother. My inbox is already full of her threats and bribes. A bit bipolar, eh?" She said, unable to muster up a smile.

"Okay, I'll leave you to that. I've got to see my mom, one of the lesser evils of superpowers." He said, still avoiding her eyes. Chloe's hand clamped on his chin, turning his face to hers.

"You know that annoys me." She said before lapsing into a brief and somewhat stiff hug before turning away. "Go ahead, fly, Superman." She near commanded, sliding her fingers down from his shoulder to his hand, squeezing it gently.

He locked eyes with her, bringing her unpolished hand to his lips and kissing it before dropping it. Then he did what he was best at, he ran.

**There will be many different pairs, and my favorites are Chloe/Lex and Chloe/Clark, so you bet there will be a bit of that in here. This is going to have many flashbacks, perhaps even most of them taking up the entire chapter, such as this one. I won't progressively move forward, i could jump from seven years ago to two and then to five. part of what makes it a mystery!**


End file.
